The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was enacted to enhance the security of households in rural areas by providing at least a hundred days of guaranteed wage employment in every financial year to every household. Orissa is one of the poorest states with a very high percentage of rural population living in abject poverty and chronic hunger. It is only natural to accord top priority to this state in terms of fund allocation. Therefore Orissa was allocated Rs 890 crore under the NREGA and the state was able to spend Rs 733 crore during 2006-7.

So far so good. Now a survey conducted in Orissa’s six poorest districts has revealed that out of this Rs 733 crore spent under NREGA , more than Rs 500 crore has been siphoned and misappropriated by government officials. This survey was conducted by a centre I am associated with, the Delhi-based Centre for Environment and Food Security. It surveyed 100 villages in the six districts of Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput region. They were Bolangir, Nuapada, Kalahandi, Koraput, Nabarangpur and Rayagada.

The Government of Orissa claims that it provided 7.99 crore man-days of employment to 13,94,169 households during 2006-7. Our back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that less than 2 crore man-days of employment has been provided on the ground and more than 6 crore man-days of employment has been accounted for only on the pages of false job cards and fabricated muster rolls.

As per the claims of the Orissa government, every needy and

demanding family in the state was given an average of 57 days of wage employment during 2006-7 and not a single needy and demanding household was denied wage employment in the 19 NREGA districts of Orissa. The CEFS survey, however, has revealed that actually not more than five days of average employment has been given to each of the needy families in 19 NREGA districts of the state and large number of such families were denied employment.

... contd.